Just Slow Down and Take a Breath

[Eric the Green]

(02-19-2022, 02:07 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(02-19-2022, 01:30 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(02-14-2022, 03:14 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: We are stuck with moving about with fossil fuels until we run out of them because fossil fuels are profitable. Profit is the only virtue that our economic system recognizes.When the profit disappears, and only then, does the business die. I could imagine automobiles being driven onto and off carrier cars so that people have short distances (most of the time) for driving. Really, the railroads would have been wise to introduce rental cars at stations so that someone could rent a car at the closest station to one's destination.

One of the supreme ironies of the disruptive protest is that it is the one thing Big Business most hates: a strike.If Corporate America could get away with it, unions would be outlawed so that workers could be 'free' to sign peonage contracts, possibly hereditary.Serfdom, USA!

No, we are not stuck with fossil fuels if in the next 10 years we make a big project of switching to renewables. This begins with passing legislation like Build Back Better, which one fossil fuel state phony-Democratic senator is now blocking. If such an effort is blocked by Republicans and fossil fuel Democrats, then it won't be done. But that will not have happened because fossil fuels are profitable. That will have happened because we were unable to dislodge the profit motive from dominating our politics. It is simply and only a matter of political will, by embracing the law and politics as part of the solution and not allowing profits to be the only dictator of our economy.

We are stuck with fossil fuels until we are compelled to divest ourselves of vehicles that depend upon fossil fuels.  Buildings will be easy to retrofit (change the roofing to solar panels).  I'm driving a twelve-year-old car, which shows how durable some are. Oil changes are cheap compared to trade-ins. We will need another 'cash-for-clunkers' arrangement in which to get 'gas buggies' off the road. That's unlikely until we get another scary downturn. I'm guessing that the average car or pick-up lasts fifteen years before it is scrapped, and that allows for causes other than crashes, fires, and natural disasters.

Some countries will not license a vehicle after ten years, and such countries can compel the steady replacement of gas vehicles with electric ones. We are not Singapore.

Quote:If we don't do this, then the next 2T and 4T will be too late; the tipping points in the Amazon, the Arctic permafrost, the Atlantic ocean current, and others, will tip and it will be too late to change our current course heading us to hothouse Earth within the next 2 centuries. Global warming feedback loops will be impossible to break. We may feel the effects more severely in future turnings tha we do now, but we will also be out of time to reverse course. People are already experiencing unacceptable damages and deaths from the breakdown of our climate. It is a violation of both conscience and self-interest to ignore them.

Global warming is still incremental, if entirely in a bad way. That is not to say that it is welcome; see also tobacco and alcohol upon health. As it is a good idea to reduce alcohol consumption to an irreducible minimum and completely quit smoking, it will be good for us to divest ourselves of many wasteful practices, including gas-powered vehicles.

Quote:It is up to the people to realize this and demand and vote for action by voting Democratic and pressuring their leaders to act during the 2020s decade. I wonder how people in the eastern 2/3 of the United States are bearing up, as storm after storm day after day pounds them this Winter already. No-one here should try to argue or avoid facing this issue. Every poster except Classic Xer should be able to understand what's happening.

The 2020s is the last reform era in which action will be possible before the tipping points set in.

Reform is still possible in a 1T.

The record of 1Ts is that change and reform gets blocked or postponed and the mood is either consolidation or retrenchment and going backward. Global warming will soon no longer bear any resemblance to "incremental". It is already a huge disaster with millions affected, and we can't turn a blind eye. And tipping points are being approached. Within 20 years we'll be on a course beyond the point of no return to hothouse Earth. Cycles all indicate that the 2020s is supposed to be a reform era, if we push for it. It will be the last chance to hold back global warming. Boomers like us need to speak up and lead and make sure our millennial friends and children vote. If they do, they have to votes to get the reform era moving.